


stupid angels

by sharkfish (waitforspring)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Castiel in the Bunker, Declarations Of Love, Fallen Castiel, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, One Shot, Post-Coital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitforspring/pseuds/sharkfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Castiel’s shoulders stiffen when he hears Dean approach, and he waits a beat too long before looking up. Dean used to practice not crumbling under Cas’s stare. He wants to stop practicing. He wants to come apart in Cas’s hands and let Cas put him back together again (again). He thinks, even now, that Castiel’s eyes are so bright as to burn.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	stupid angels

Dean didn’t realize he could sneak up on Castiel. And he didn’t realize it would startle him so, the man he secretly liked to think of as his angel, continuing to wash the dishes and hum something that sounds suspiciously like a Britney Spears song. His angel washes dishes. His angel can be caught unawares. His angel looks incredible in a pair of Dean’s old jeans and a t-shirt that shows the knob at the top of his spine, vulnerable without a tan collar to cover it up.

Then again, Castiel has never really been Dean’s. Dean is the one with a scar that sears bright and a heartbeat that never seems to stop when Cas is near. Even almost human, Cas is so closed off to Dean, far moreso than he is with even Sam the demon lover/blood drinker/causer of the apocalypse (again).

He watches for long, long moments. Every now and then Cas’s hips bump to one side or another and Dean thinks he might be trying to dance.

Castiel’s shoulders stiffen when he hears Dean approach, and he waits a beat too long before looking up. Dean used to practice not crumbling under Cas’s stare. He wants to stop practicing. He wants to come apart in Cas’s hands and let Cas put him back together again (again). He thinks, even now, that Castiel’s eyes are so bright as to burn.

“Coffee,” Dean says, awkwardly over-enthusiastic. “Oh, thank god.”

“It’s just me,” Cas says. A smile crouches near his mouth, ready to pounce. When Dean laughs -- not just an amused chuckle but a gasping guffaw -- the smile comes out. He sees a flash of Cas’s teeth before Cas is neutral again.

Dean pours a cup of coffee for himself and leans his hip against the counter, not too far from Cas. Not too close, either. Dean is unsure. It makes him chew the inside of his cheek, studying Cas as hard as he’s ever studied any dissected engine block. It makes him slump down, trying to catch Cas’s eyes, not sure what’s so interesting in those soap suds anyway.

Castiel’s shoulders tense further, and he says, queerly quiet in the empty house, “Thank you.” He swallows. “For last night.”  

“You don’t have to thank me,” Dean says, and stops himself from following up with, what are friends for? He won’t deflect. Not when he’s waited so long for a chance.

Cas carefully rinses a plate. And keeps rinsing the plate. And Dean wants to shake him. And Cas says, “Did I… hurt you?”

“No, Cas. Of course not.” Dean thinks Cas may still be rinsing the same plate. “You liked it, right?”

_Dean Winchester, do you remember when your sexual prowess was a basic truth of the universe? Do you remember when everything you did was practiced and poised to perfection -- a coy smile, a brief touch, that tease in your throat?_

Once, Dean treated men and women like neat little equations he could solve almost effortlessly. He collected them, one by one. And now, he’s never been smaller or more nervous.

Castiel laughs like someone who just realized the joke was on them all along, and he says, “Yes, Dean. Yes. I liked it.”

Dean burns his mouth gulping the rest of his coffee just so he can turn away to pour more. _Don’t ask. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. Don’t ask!_ “Did, uh, did Sam say no?”

“What?”

“When you asked Sam.” Oh, fuck, Dean has never liked himself all that much, but this is one of the cruelest things he’s ever done.

“Asked Sam what?”

“Oh, jesus fuck, Cas! When you asked him to have _intercourse_ with you!”

The perplexity in Castiel’s voice is all old “angel of the lord” Cas. “Why would I ask Sam to have intercourse with me?”

“Because you don’t even _like_ me anymore!”

This conversation took a very wrong turn somewhere but Dean is far too lost to begin retracing his steps. Dean Winchester, Bridge Burner Extraordinaire. Castiel turns to face him fully, hands dripping but forgotten. “I don’t dislike you.”

“We haven’t been friends in a long time, Cas. Don’t pretend that’s not true.”

“That is true,” Cas says, “but I wasn’t exactly truthful last night.”

“You were _definitely_ a virgin.”

A blush. Oh, god, Dean loved to make Cas blush, back when they were friends. And the night before, he loved bringing a flush to Cas’s skin in other ways. “Yes, but --” Cas clenches his fists at his sides, his gaze downward, like he’s trying to contain something. “In Heaven, there wasn’t -- we didn’t know about sex. But there was always this -- this --” The words that follow are all vowels or maybe no vowels at all, too slippery and full of light for Dean to grasp, like fish flashing down a shallow stream. “This human mode of communication is inefficient and imprecise. In Heaven, there were so many things we didn’t know. I didn’t know. But there was something bigger in me, and for more time than you can imagine existing, I thought my conviction to serve my Father was simply larger than that of my brothers.”

Castiel realizes he’s dripping all over the lovely hardwood and grabs a towel. “And then I was given an assignment to raise your soul from Carcosa.”

“Cas, if I could undo that somehow--”

“Listen to me, dammit!” Cas slams his hand down on the counter. It surprises them both, Castiel staring at his own hand like it no longer belongs to him. Or, well. Is no longer the hand of the vessel his angelic form once possessed but which now belongs to him because Jimmy fucked off to the Lost island or something. “That thing that has always been bigger than me is you, Dean. I didn’t realize it until I started to change.” (No one mentions Castiel’s Falling by name.) “Once I recognized the sexual feelings I had towards you, it was easy to reconcile -- um, the other feelings. I knew you would decline if I told you that.”

“You are such a stupid fucking angel,” Dean says, shaking his head, his tone full of wonder so Castiel’s head tilts to the side in a question. Dean’s long-legged stride covers the space between them in a step and a shuffle, and Dean grabs Cas’s chin too roughly to tilt his face upwards. “You remade me, Cas, and you can’t see inside me?”

He kisses Cas without really knowing he's going to do it. “Stupid, stupid, dick of an angel.” He kisses Cas again, his body crowding Cas until they are both curved over the sink, Cas’s hands fisted in Dean’s shirt. “But you’re…” Dean licks his lips, says hesitantly: “You’re my angel. Right, Cas?”

“Yes. We belong together,” Cas says, and Dean could kill him for how somber he pulls off such a line. “Though technically, I have amassed millennia worth of knowledge and can hardly be called--”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [really elegant sharkfish](http://reallyelegantsharkfish.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


End file.
